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In certain areas the Anderson shelters were useless, they filled up with water.

My husband was in the Royal navy 1935 when he was 18. He always wanted to be in the navy and served on the CONVOYS.

They went out of Liverpool to various Scottish Lochs so the Luftwaffe would not know. They would meet the CONVOYS from America in Mid 鈥� Atlantic. My husband served on a CORVETTE and he always used to say 鈥渢here were some seas out there鈥�!

They used to have to leave casualties that had been sunk by U-Boats swimming in the water. They dare not stop at this time because there were too many U-Boat attacks. The sea was fiercely cold and life expectancy was next to nothing, the casualties can be verified as amazingly high.
The convoys transported much needed fuel, food and other equipment. They remember it being heart-breaking because they had to pursue and try and sink the U-Boats. People would fall foul not only of drowning, but from the effects of weather and fuel in the sea. Sometimes the sea would be on fire and the drowning men would also suffer burning.
The convoys were very often controlled by the slowest vessel and this led them to be more vulnerable to attack.

He was on a submarine depot ship in Portland when Dunkirk happened and I was with him and remember the bombing. The German bombers started bombing regular.
We could here this Heinkel falling from the sky and they had screaming sounds from the aircraft when they dived to bomb us. The port went up and everywhere was blazing, I thought they had hit Roland鈥檚 ship at this time.
But they had hit a merchant ship that had entered the port the night before.

After this time I went home because Roland was sent to Scotland, and when I arrived back in Leicester, they bombed Cavendish Road.

When Roland served on the Western Approaches rations were meagre and one Christmas dinner they had Hard 鈥� Tack Biscuits. These you had to soak first in order for them to edible. They could only have three days rations on board.

Eventually Roland went to America, three ships crews were sent to America, because that is where the ships were being built. It was too difficult to build them in Britain. Roland was sent to crew an AIRCRAFT CARRIER named 鈥楢THELING鈥�. The instructions were different to our ships so the crews had to re-learn some instructions.
They had to do the sea trials out at Vancouver, and then they came down the coast of America, through the Panama Canal back to England, where they loaded up the Ship to sail to the Pacific. They also carried supplies for the FORGOTTEN ARMY in BURMA and they used to bomb the Japs from the Carrier.

On his way to Australia Roland nearly lost his life Streaming Para vanes these were used to cut wires to mines. Through a twist of fate Roland had to do another mans job on the other side of the ship after he had completed his own workload. The wires nearly cut him in half and he had to be taken to Sidney hospital for two years, this finished his war years in Sidney.
I was unable to find out where he was and it was later I found out he had internal injuries and later on in peace time, he had to go for an operation in hospital and it was here that it was verified that he was suffering from his war wounds and even though this could be proven, he was still DENIED a valid War Wound Pension.

As an after thought I remember Roland going to Iceland for a year鈥檚 service. Icelandic people did not like our presence very much.
One day Roland had to work on the electrics of a British ship that was tied alongside an American ship and he had written permission to walk across the American ship to access the British ship. An American guard pointed his gun at Roland and threatened to shoot him if he did not go away.
Roland had to get a small boat to take him around the long way. Over zealousness or nerves, or incorrect procedure?

This story was submitted to the 鈥淧eoples War Site by Rod Aldwinckle of the CSV Action Desk on behalf of Eileen Pegg and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions

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